


Letters Home

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coulson wonders What Would Daisy Do?, Daisy pulls some Skye tricks, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Longing, Phil Coulson and his huge crush on Daisy Johnson, Realization, Romance, Separations, Skoulson Romfest 2k16, Superhero Registration Act, Unresolved Sexual Tension, they're both flawless social justice warriors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:16:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5785024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson didn't plan on becoming an advocate for Inhuman rights. Daisy didn't plan on running away.</p><p>Skoulson RomFest 2k16: Day 4 - Registration Act</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Coulson didn’t plan on becoming an advocate for Inhuman rights, that’s not how this started at all.

People were discussing around him, and he was quiet like he had spent this last couple of months being quiet.

He didn’t want to get into it.

It started friendly enough, a group chat in the lab, the news talking about a new proposal for a law that would force gifted individuals to register their powers with the authorities. And while everybody seems to acknowledge the danger of an slippery slope the way in which most of the team was talking about it… well, Coulson could basically taste Daisy’s frustration growing. She is keeping quiet as well, as quiet as him, while her friends argue the merits of the kind of intervention that drove Jiaying to war.

Coulson grows uneasy with the discussion. He would love to know what Daisy is feeling about this whole thing but they haven’t really spoken in months, not about important stuff.

The argument moves to SHIELD’s role in all this.

Bobbi is pragmatic. “SHIELD’s reputation just got restored in the public eye. Are we sure this new law is something we can afford to oppose? Openly, I mean.”

It’s a genuine question, she’s not picking sides. Coulson knows that push comes to shove Bobbi would die to protect Daisy and her team. He’s not sure that’s enough. He’s definitely sure it’s not what Daisy wants to hear. He can’t read people’s vibrations like her but he can read the way her jaw is set, the almost blank look in her eyes as she tries to stay out of the argument as well.

“I don’t think we should take our _reputation_ into account here,” Mack tells her, a bit impatient. It’s a rare thing to see Mack arguing _against Bobbi_ and a year ago Mack would have probably been the first one to consider the Registration Act reasonable. But that was before he became Daisy’s partner. Coulson sympathizes with that, he knows the effect Daisy has. May, too, seems to have gone quietly to the other side of what people would expect. After what happened to Andrew it’s no wonder her priorities have changed.

“A lot of these people are really dangerous,” Hunter says. “People need to be protected.”

“I agree,” Coulson says. He can practically feel Daisy’s heart sinking at his words. _Let me finish_ , he pleads wordlessly. “But it’s not our place to decide what to do about it.”

“What do you mean, sir?” Simmons asks. She has been pretty tame so far in her opinions, but Coulson suspects she’s on the side that finds the new law proposal troubling. Which is a change for Simmons as well, after last year.

“Even if these people are dangerous it’s not for us, or the government or a world council to decide what to do about it,” he explains. “It’s for the Inhumans to decide. We don’t have the right to treat a whole race as a threat, and we sure as hell don’t have the right to make that _a law_ . Specially not a race that has suffered this kind of prosecution before.”

“So we should just… not get involved?” Bobbi says. Again, a genuine, _practical_ question.

Coulson is good with practical and in the end he knows his job has not changed.

“No. If there’s a threat we will protect people from it, like SHIELD has always done,” he tells them. “I’m just not comfortable with creating laws to contain Inhumans if you don’t have any Inhuman at the table when you do it.”

Everybody looks at him, baffled.

After this couple of months of silence and withdrawal Coulson can’t blame them. Ever since Rosalind, since Ward, he has felt like he didn’t know what he’s supposed to do. A bit like it felt when SHIELD fell and he discovered his whole life had been meaningless.

He doesn’t feel that way anymore. About this? Coulson is pretty sure what he’s supposed to do about this.

He’s not as good at formulating political theory as Daisy, but he’s been thinking a lot about this lately. 

“What about the greater good?” Fitz asks. After his experiences on the alien planet and with the deathly monster Coulson allowed to come back from it Fitz’s whole outlook on the Inhuman matter had completely changed. He’s scared.

“The greater good,” Daisy says, breaking her silence, looking at the floor. She snorts. “There’s nothing _good_ about this.”

 

+

 

She left the discussion in a rush, biting the inside of her cheek (he saw, he always looks at her, even if from the corner of his eye) before she said something else, not wanting to hurt her teammates with her anger. A part of Coulson wishes she would. A part of him knows Daisy would have an easier life if she stopped pushing everything down. But then she wouldn’t be Daisy.

A couple of hours later Coulson finds her waiting for him at the door of his quarters. It feels like it’s been ages since they’ve seen each other outside mission talk, or alone like this.

“Thank you for before,” she says, no preambles.

“It was getting a bit out of hand, it was my responsibility,” he says. He sounds so cold. Has he been sounding so cold all this time? Is this how he’s been talking to her? He decides to try again. “They’re just worried, after-”

“I know,” she cuts him. He should know better than to excuse them.

“They say this stuff but you know they would walk through fire your you, don’t you? All of them.”

Daisy gives him a soft smile and nods.

“Still, I appreciate your words,” she tells him.

It feels like a weird reprieve to be talking about important stuff like this again, Coulson realizes he has missed it, and gets drunk on the moment, wants more of it, wants to tell her everything that’s on his mind about this.

“I would like to believe I would have said the same thing if I had never met you but… I’m afraid that’s not the case.”

Daisy frowns in a familiar way. “You’re wrong,” she says. “You would have said _exactly_ the same if there hadn’t been an Inhuman in the room.”

 _It’s not that there was an Inhuman in the room_ , he thinks. _It’s that you were there_. But something about Daisy’s confidence in him, unjustified as it is (specially lately), makes him want to live up to it. To do something more.

“I think it’s time I say all those words in public,” he tells her. She gives him a questioning look. “SHIELD has people’s attention again. And some goodwill. It’s time to put that to good use.”

Daisy looks upset. He had thought she’d be pleased with the idea. It’s the kind of tactic she would propose.

“But doing it yourself… you’d have to tell people you’re alive.”

Because _of course_ she would worry about that. “I know,” Coulson says. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You should probably go speak with some people before that,” she says, her voice smaller than before. “So they wouldn’t have to find out through the news.”

“I was planning on it,” he assure her, a bit offended that she thinks he’s so callous that he would let Audrey find out in such a way.

Suddenly Daisy lets out a soft laughter.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just that this is very you. You basically ignore my existence for months and then suddenly this… this sweeping epic gesture to protect my kind.”

She sighs a bit, like she’s not sure one cancels the other. Coulson knows it doesn’t.

 _Epic gesture_.

When he repeats it in his mind it sounds mocking. He feels powerless. Something inside him telling him that this is going get really bad, and it won’t necessarily ever get better.

 

+

 

That’s what he does.

What he keeps doing.

Going to meetings, arguing with the likes of Talbot and people less well-meaning than that. Arguing with some of his former colleagues. If the Avengers were available he would be arguing with some of them as well. 

Showing up, that’s what he does.

Showing his face on tv.

“Painting a target on your back,” Daisy adds, sitting on his desk with her tablet in her hands.

Coulson smiles at her apprehension. “More conspiracy theories.”

“You’re getting very unpopular on social media,” she says. “Don’t Google yourself. Seriously, don’t.”

“Stop worrying about that.”

He’s putting together one last meeting between Inhuman sympathizers before the Registration Arc proposal becomes law, one last brainstorming session to stop that from happening. Coulson knows it will probably do no good, but he has to try.

There’s a part of it, more selfish, darker: he feels guilty for unleashing the monster on the planet, for putting Daisy’s kind in danger for a personal vendetta. Daisy’s concern makes him feel like a fake.

“I worry about the death threats,” she says. “Maybe you should cancel the meeting.”

“We’ve got security. And those kinds of threats… they’re never real.”

Daisy seems unconvinced. Coulson touches her arm a moment. They have become closer again since he started all this, since that day he fatefully spoke up in the lab. But he thinks this is the first time they touch after months. They both look at Coulson’s fingers around her arm, like they’re both a bit started. He pulls back, only slightly awkward about it.

“Thanks for worrying about me, anyway,” he tells her.

Daisy tilts her head, looking profoundly frustrated with him, like he’s such an idiot for thanking her _for that_. He has learned that from the best.

Coulson was wrong, though: the death threats were real.


	2. Chapter 2

He tries to make light of it afterwards, and as soon as he says it he knows he’s made a mistake.

“I should be more careful with this hand,” he says, pointing at his cast, the arm in the swing - like a bad memory but heavier instead of lighter. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“Don’t do that,” Daisy says. She has lost the youthful habit of biting her bottom lip when she is upset but Coulson can see the impulse now.

He didn’t mean to make her upset, he just doesn’t want her to worry. He’s had way worse. Not the first time he breaks this arm, either.

They are standing in his office, four days after the attack.

Recovering from the explosion meant that Coulson missed the day when they passed the Registration Act, spending it getting some drug-addled rest in medical. He’s out of there soon (too soon, Simmons tells her with that professional expression on her face that Coulson finds actually quite scary), when it still hurts quite a bit, quite a lot when he’s honest, but for the actual news breaking he was still lying down.

Daisy’s face in the hours afterwards said it all. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. She even sent the rest of the Inhuman agents back to the Cocoon, even though they could have been a comfort (specially Joey) to have with her. Coulson doesn’t blame any of them for not wanting to be around humans and SHIELD at this time. Daisy stays back, still caught up between two worlds. No one in the team brings up any pro-government argument anymore - not just because of Daisy, but also because Coulson’s two days in medbay with his arm broken in four different places cleared up who the bad guys were.

“This is not going to stop,” Daisy is saying now, looking at Coulson the same way she used to look at him right after he lost his hand, like it was all her fault.

The air around the office is eerie, too quiet (everyone else has already gone to bed, only the night shift is in the garage, regular operations stop, the priority being protecting their Inhuman agents for now) and her words fall heavy like a prophecy.

He notices what she is wearing; the leather jacket set on her shoulders and a thick burgundy sweater underneath, like she’s ready to go out.

“Daisy, why are you dressed like that?”

He thinks he might have missed some mission mandate, what with being out of commission. Perhaps she’s going to the Cocoon with the others. Perhaps she’s going to see Lincoln after all.

“This is not going to be over,” she repeats, shaking her head and walking up to him. Coulson is startled by her sudden proximity, because Daisy is not one to invade the personal space like this.

“Not right now,” he agrees. “But someday - we have to keep fighting. I don’t need to tell _you_ that.”

She’s the one who taught him to fight. And maybe Coulson hasn’t been the best boss and definitely not the best friend these past couple of months, but he still takes her lessons to heart.

She comes even closer, so much that Coulson can see the exhaustion in her eyes clearly, the heavy eyelids and the redness.

She brushes her fingers against the cast on his broken arm.

Suddenly she looks a lot older than him.

“I can’t let you do this because of me,” Daisy says.

Coulson feels the dryness in his throat, _tries_ to swallow. “It’s not because of you.”

“I know,” she says. “But it’s also _because_ of me.”

He can’t really argue against that notion.

Daisy gets that expression again. The one she had for weeks after they came back from the Illiad. The one she had after Trip’s death. Coulson remembers asking her about running away. Remembers the only reason she didn’t answer the question was that she didn’t really see a way out (he didn’t understand _why_ later).

He reaches out - wishing it didn’t have to be with his prosthetic - and touches his fingers to her shoulder.

“I know what you’re thinking and I can’t let you do it.”

“I know,” Daisy says, bringing their bodies even closer together, until Coulson can feel her hair tickle against his temple. “And know you would stand here and talk yourself raw until you’ve convinced me of all the reason I can’t leave.”

“And I will,” he tells her, lifting his left hand to touch her arm.

“I know you would have,” Daisy says.

Coulson pulls back, about to ask her what she means by that, but Daisy’s expression silences him completely. Then he feels the metal pressed up against his side.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy says.

The last coherent thought he has is that he has never been shot with an ICER before and that he had no idea this was what it felt like.

 

+

 

He and Bobbi and Mack fly where the records tell them she left the Quinjet, immediately after he wakes up and informs of the situation.

His head still hurts from getting knocked out. He remembers the day when he last went into the memory machine and Daisy aimed an ICER at him. She didn’t shoot and then later when he locked her in the vault and went after Hank Thompson she still couldn’t shoot him. A part of Coulson worried that she wouldn’t be able to, if need be. Well, the headache and the slight soreness on the skin below his ribs answer that question.

Going after the Quinjet is a huge waste of time (and he doesn’t have time to waste).

Coulson knew they were going to find nothing there, anyway, is acting on inertia, and because he has to do something. Knew they wouldn’t find the Quinjet there, for a starter.

“I’m confused,” Bobbi says, looking at an ugly stretch of countryside in the north of France while they all freeze their asses. “The navigational system on these Quinjets is supposed to be unhackable.”

Coulson starts heading back to their plane. “Come on, Bobbi. Since when _unhackable_ ever meant anything to Daisy?”

Bobbi and Mack exchange a look.

“If Daisy has gone to all this trouble not to be found…” Mack says, looking at Coulson. “Sir, I imagined you’d be the last person to go against her desires.”

It’s okay, he’s been asking the same thing inside his own head the whole trip.

“And I’d normally agree with you,” he tells Mack. “But she’s not doing this because she wants to. She’s doing this because she thinks she has to protect me, protect all of us.”

Mack nods. He too must know how reckless and stubborn his partner is when she thinks people are putting themselves on the line for her.

And the ICER wasn’t just to make a point. The head start that allowed Daisy was enough for her trail to go cold. They’ve got nothing. He lost her.

 

+

 

The first video entry (“ _Is this a vlog with v?_ ” the not very tech-savvy Hunter asks, proud of himself) hits the world two days after.

When Coulson sees her face it’s like he has missed her.

They all gather in his office to watch the transmission. He can tell everybody is relieved to see she’s okay - it wasn’t just him imagining worst case scenarios for two days.

As soon as it starts Coulson’s profiler gears start turning. There’s still dark under her eyes, like the last time he saw her, but he doesn’t look hurt in any way. She doesn’t seem scared or nervous about her surroundings, which means she must have found a safe place to record the video.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done something like this,” Daisy says to the camera, touching her hair and Coulson wonders if anyone else in the room knows she’s talking about her old Rising Tide podcasts. “Of course I’ve never had to show my face before. It’s a bit - uh - new. Back then I was very focused on not letting anyone knew who I was. Anonymity was vital for what I wanted to do. You could argue now is even more important but…” Coulson watches her swallow. “My name is Daisy Johnson. I’m an Inhuman. I’m - I _was_ \- a SHIELD agent until three days ago. I should be registered as a gifted individual for the security of the country. But I _refuse_.”

The whole room draws a breath. He’s pretty sure he can hear May shaking her head (not that he could tear his eyes away from the screen). Daisy has just painted a very clear target on her back with this bold move.

She goes on to encourage her fellow Inhumans to do the same and avoid registration - _she’ll be charged with treason_ Coulson thinks and for a moment he can’t breathe, then he remembers, _if they ever catch her_ , they’ll never catch her - and to go into hiding.She says not to trust the people who want to put them in a list without their consent, without their votes.

It’s her old podcast voice, the naive sentence constructions and the vehemence. _Skye_. It’s the old voice but the determination is all new, all Daisy Johnson, all her mother’s daughter. Coulson would be intimidated if he wasn’t in awe.

But then at the end of the video something changes in her face, her expression softens as they make a pause. There might be even be a little smile, there. One Coulson thinks he knows. She’s looking directly at the camera and Coulson has the crazy idea that she might be looking _at him_.

“And for those of you at home… I know you will try to find me, and it means something that you will. But you can’t decrypt this message. Come on, it’s me. Of course you can’t decrypt it.”

She signs off on that smirk.

 

+

 

He watches the video many times over the next days. And not entirely with the objective of studying it to figure out Daisy’s location. Maybe he could help in that, too, notice something everyone else is missing (the hubris of that, he knows, but this is Daisy, after all, so _maybe_ ), and he can’t really justify having missed her, since she’s only been gone for a handful of days.

It’s so strange to hear her use that tone of voice again, he keeps thinking, and he realizes that anyone not familiar (intimately familiar, he guesses, remembering how many times he listened for clues, even before they had ever met) with Daisy’s work for the Rising Tide wouldn’t catch the difference, the nuances of it.

He doesn’t mean to start talking back, like a madman, but Daisy is not here. And he realizes she’s the one person he wants to talk this through with. They have so many things to discuss, so many plans to draw. Things to protect. Together. 

Daisy took away something precious - his ability to talk to her, to reply. He knows why she did it, but he feels maimed by it - not being able to talk to her, to let her know he supports her - and that’s not a word Coulson uses lightly.

“Where are you, Daisy?” he whispers the fourth time he watches the video.

She was telling the truth; there are no markers in the video, no way to tell the location. Coulson put their best technicians to it - but Daisy herself had trained the Geek Squad, she could beat them.

_you at home_

and 

_it means something that you will_

Is he fooling himself thinking that Daisy is talking directly to him?


	3. Chapter 3

It takes him very little time to track down Lincoln, which worries him. The man only spent a short while in SHIELD but he should learn how to avoid detection.

“She hasn’t contacted me,” Lincoln tells him without preamble, impatient to get out of the conversation. He must have seen the video then.

“I know.”

“And I don’t know where she is,” he adds.

Coulson knows that too.

“If you find out… _don’t tell me_ ,” he orders.

Campbell looks surprised. After seeing the video Coulson has decided to trust that Daisy has a good reason for keeping everybody in the dark.

“Okay, I won’t,” Lincoln agrees.

Coulson thinks he has a vague idea of what Daisy is going to do about this. And he is trying to do exactly what she would want him to. He himself doesn’t know what to do and when he’s inadequate the best option is to believe she knows what she’s doing. (She probably doesn’t - running away was an end in itself, but she’s good at improvising; Coulson wonders if Campbell knows that, if he got to know her at all.)

“I don’t think she is going to contact either of us,” Coulson tells the other man. “I think she trusts us to know what to do about this.”

Lincoln looks at him from head to toe. “That sounds like Daisy,” he says. “She’s very trusting.”

Coulson lets that go - he realizes he knows nothing of the state of Daisy and Lincoln’s relationship. He has tried to know as little as possible through it all, for reasons that are only becoming clear now. It’s strange to hear the complaint in the young man’s voice, like Daisy’s trust is a burden.

“The people at the Cocoon… I’m sorry to say but they’re not safe there, not now,” Coulson says humbly. He knows what Lincoln thinks about SHIELD’s capacity (and willingness) to protect his kind. And right now Coulson completely agrees. And right now he can use Lincoln’s animosity towards him as a weapon to get what he wants. “Will you help them hide?”

Coulson also knows Lincoln doesn’t normally want to be _involved_ , and maybe it’s unfair of him to ask the guy this, but he thinks this is what Daisy would have wanted.

(And Coulson just wishes she were here to tell him if he’s doing right.)

Lincoln thinks about it for a long moment, then nods slowly and thoughtfully.

“But after I take them in I can’t have further contact with SHIELD,” he tells Coulson. “ _You_ can’t contact me.”

Coulson gives him a little smirk. “I guess we’ll have to survive without each other, Mr Campbell.”

Lincoln chuckles at the jab, and it’s truly humorous and warm, friendly, and they part as allies.

 

+

 

He comes back and gets angry at her, quietly, in his room, the video paused on the moment where she looks more tired and more honest. He would like to make some gesture, smash the desk with her right hand, but his arm is still in a cast.

“If you think I’m going to stop doing this just because you got yourself out of the equation,” he says to a Daisy who can’t hear him.

He keeps thinking how he was made to watch as she broke almost all the bones in her hands and arms, to protect other people (including Coulson) from her powers. What prompts her to run away now, take herself out of the equation, is the same instinct. She will endure hurt to make sure others are okay. Like many things about Daisy there’s a fine line between a blessing and a curse here.

Then he thinks she’s too smart and she can read him like a blueprint - all of them really. If the authorities were to know her location and anyone from SHIELD was around there’s no way they would give her up without a fight. Daisy knows (Coulson _hopes_ she knows) anyone in the Playground would die rather than let the government’s task force take her away.

There’s a knock on the door. Coulson shuts the screen quickly, like he was doing something wrong, something he shouldn’t be caught doing (what would the team think if the knew he talks to Daisy’s videos out loud?), something he has to hide.

“Joey,” he says, surprised, when he opens the door.

Surprised and panicked. He shouldn’t be here.

“What are you doing here? You should have left with Alisha hours ago.”

“Yes, I wanted to talk about that with you, Director. Sir,” he says, too formal. Joey is always too formal around him. Coulson gestures for him to come in.

“Oh, sorry,” Joey says, looking at Coulson’s sling. “I forgot to ask. Are you feeling better?”

Coulson nods. “Much better. Thank you for asking. Please take a seat.”

The other man does. He always has this kind of nervous energy about him, from the little Coulson has seen of him. Today that’s amplified, understandably.

“I can’t protect you here, Agent Gutierrez,” he says, leveling with him.

“I know, I’m not… I don’t want to be a burden, I will leave, if that helps you,” Joey says. “But I don’t like hiding.”

Coulson smiles a bit. “I know that.”

“Watching that video Daisy made, I don’t know. I’m still a SHIELD agent. Am I not?”

Watching Joey’s face twist with doubt Coulson can’t help but remember the time he himself asked that question, when he was lost and in the middle of what seemed like endless snow. For him SHIELD was the only thing worthy, but he has come to learn it’s not the same for everyone.

“Being a SHIELD agent might not be the safest thing for you right now,” he says. He has to be practical (he hopes Daisy wouldn’t begrudge him for that) and having people like Joey as agents might not be the safest thing for SHIELD either.

“Forget about that being safe stuff,” Joey snaps, one hand curled into a loose fist. It’s the first time Coulson has seen the Inhuman agent get crossed. “What do you think I should do?”

“I don’t know,” Coulson says. “Agent Johnson believed Inhumans working side by side with humans, in SHIELD, could make a difference.”

“Yeah,” Joey says, thinking about it. Coulson is not sure she was that explicit in her advise to Joey and the others. Maybe he’s just hearing about this goal of hers for the first time. Coulson remembers when she said something along those lines to him, late one night as they were discussing the first effects of the Inhuman breakout. She had been fearful, wary of sounding too grandiose. She was thinking about her mother, probably. Jiaying’s certainty had become justification for her crimes. Daisy didn’t want to make that mistake.

“All this about protecting us, but what about us protecting you?”Joey goes on.

No wonder Daisy wanted him in her team. Coulson wishes he had taken the time to know the man better, but he had been engaged in his own drama.

“What would Daisy do?” Joey asks.

“Well, what she did do is leave,” Coulson replies. “So you and the others could be safe. Maybe the right thing to do is make sure her efforts do not go to waste.”

Joey takes a moment to reply. He frowns - he’s a frowner, Coulson thinks, and a pretty attractive one. Coulson smiles, he’s been surrounded by frowners, worriers, all his life. Joey touches his own chin and lips, thinking hard about Coulson’s words, gaze dropped.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” he says. “That’s what she wants us to do but… if she were me… would she run?”

Coulson considers him seriously.

“No, she wouldn’t,” he tells him, in all honesty.

Joey nods, and he looks scared but he also looks relieved.

 

+

 

A first wave of arrests.

Some people refused registration, Coulson wonders if encouraged by Daisy’s example.

A young gifted woman - he watches her on the news, as they take her away, her hair dark brown like Daisy's.

He sends May and Mack to negotiate with the authorities, in case there’s something to do (there isn’t - May and Mack spend _hours_ trying to shake their tail afterwards).

That night he dreams about Daisy - getting arrested, her powers taken away with one of those dampening gloves, like the ones Simmons made to help her heal and that were destroyed after the incident in the Illiad. It’s not like any other nightmare Coulson has ever had. It feels real in a different way, like jumping into his future self. He watches Daisy put to trial, everything done very much according to the law. The courtroom looks like it does in the tv shows, but it _feels_ as real as a death sentence. He keeps quiet in the nightmare, sitting far away from Daisy, watching on. He doesn’t try to stop what’s happening and when he wakes up (sweating, short of breath, with a feeling of falling apart he hadn’t experienced since he was carving alien symbols on the wall) Coulson wonders if him not doing anything was the whole point of the dream, more than having to witness as Daisy was lead to her execution as traitor to humanity.

In the nightmare she doesn’t look like she does in her video. She looks like the last time they spoke, in his office - Coulson remembers her looking kind and sad before she shot him. He remembers warm light.

 

+

 

She releases more videos over the next couple of weeks.

Mostly aimed at other Inhumans, telling them to stand up with her, and telling them how to keep safe, telling them not to lose heart. She doesn’t tell them to resist or get themselves arrested. She doesn’t tell them what to risk - even if she has risked everything. She tells them it’s their choice, and Coulson knows how important that word is for her, how much it matters that the Inhumans should have one.

(Coulson wonders what Daisy would say to him if she knew he has been speaking to the ghost she’d left on tape - not on tape, it’s digital, but Coulson likes that expression better - and would she like to speak back if she knew)

She doesn’t just talk about her “cause” (a couple of times he’s heard the word in the media - he’s not sure if it was fearful or mocking); she keeps moving and though she doesn’t tell where she is, and Coulson has long stopped telling the technicians to find out, but the backgrounds change, the light changes, Daisy talks about the road, meeting new people.

Daisy talks about how hard it is for her, what she’s doing.

She talks about home.

“I used to do this. This was my life,” she says in her latest video - the team coming together again to watch it, like a religious ritual. “It shouldn’t be so hard. But it is. Hard. And I miss… _I miss_. I used to know better than that, get attached. That used to be rule number one for me. Then I got careless. I got a home. And now I’m here missing it. Missing the building, its corridors and walls. The gym where I normally get my ass kicked. Playing videogames, I never thought I’d miss that. I miss the stupidest things.” Daisy drops her head a bit and there’s a pause and a tiny smile before she lifts her chin again. “I miss the silly coffee mugs with outdated memes on it. The people who used them… yeah, I guess I miss _you_.”


	4. Chapter 4

“She’s changed her hair?” is what Hunter chooses to comment on the next video. “Again.”

“She’s trying to avoid being recognized,” Bobbi reminds him.

“Well, she makes a terrible blonde.”

Coulson is not interested in Hunter’s assessment of Daisy’s appearance (which he doesn’t agree with, but Daisy will always been the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, the unintrusive truth of that realization somewhere in the back of his mind, always). He’s more worried that she feels threatened enough to dye her hair.

At the end of the video though she apologizes to the owner of the diner whose bathroom left all messy after she dyed her hair.

“Jokes,” Fitz says, appalled. “She’s joking. Why would she joke?”

Coulson’s frown deepens. 

He knows what Daisy using humor means.

 

+

 

The whole team is out when the next one airs. The first they are not watching together. Coulson finds himself alone in his office, alone with Daisy’s new words, which he is so thirsty for it almost hurts physically to wait for them.

“I don’t like the idea of you putting yourself in danger for me. But I would risk my life for you, so I guess it’s only fair.”

In some videos Coulson fantasizes that she’s talking to him.

When he shrugs he can see how much thinner she is now. 

“I picked up a newspaper today, while I was at it,” she says, lifting the paper to the camera. “ _Daisy Johnson, responsible for countrywide acts of terrorism_ ,” she reads. “My parents would be proud of me.”

“I think they would be, actually,” Coulson says to the empty air.

Daisy chuckles, the first genuine smile he’s seen in a while.

“You know what? They _would_ be proud of me, actually. Their terrorist daughter,” she jokes. “Specially my mom.”

Now it’s Coulson’s turn to laugh, as if they were really having a conversation.

 

+

 

He sends Joey to her, because he feels she needs to see a familiar, friendly face. It kills Coulson that it can’t be him, but he has gone through all the reasons it can’t.

He’s not sure he’ll find her - Daisy can’t be found unless she wants to, and he’s not sure she would want to. Joey is an Inhuman, but he’s SHIELD, and Daisy is a known enemy of the state by now, and she wouldn’t want them risking the connection.

Maybe it’s just enough that she knows they tried to contact, that she’s not alone.

And if Joey doesn’t find her, at least he can find some of the Inhuman cells scattered across the country, the ones under Daisy’s (indirect) control.

“You sure you’re not trying to get rid of me, boss?” Joey teases him.

As the only Inhuman on the base right now he has been in a bit of an uncomfortable position. Operations are mostly paralyzed around here, except for the cases surrounding this issue, the days consumed on checking the news and watching together. You could feel the air in the room immediately change when Joey was with them. It wasn’t on purpose, but Joey must have felt it too.

With Hydra still possessing the means to control their Inhuman victims the rate of incidents keeps increasing. It’s not safe in here, but it’s definitely not any safer out there.

“Be safe,” he tells Joey, because the last thing they need is to lose him, too.

When they say goodbye Joey hugs him unexpectedly.

Coulson doesn’t react at first - he was seriously not counting on a display of affection from him the last of his Inhuman agent - but after a beat he wraps his arm around the man’s back, experimentally, because he’s only just out of the cast and it still hurts a bit when he bends it.

“Sorry,” Joey says, awkwardly, as he pulls back.

Coulson shakes his head. “It’s okay.”

When Agent Gutierrez walks out of his door Coulson has no idea if they’ll ever see each other again.

The arm bothers him even more after he leaves.

 

+

 

He likes how she starts every video saying “My name is Daisy Johnson and I’m Inhuman.” There’s something primitively charming about it but he guesses she knows more about it than he does. He’s sure she’s worked on it, finding the most effective way of reaching the public.

When he thinks about it he’s still impressed. If she wasn’t his agent already (is she still his agent? is she still _his_?) he’d try to hire her.

“Did I tell you what an incredible agent you are often enough?” he asks out loud. In his office, a 2D image of Daisy and a glass of scotch as his company this evening, after a day of meeting with various agencies who want to secretly collaborate with SHIELD on the Hydra front. Daisy is still a terrorist but at least they know she’s not the only threat out there.

“I don’t think I told you enough times,” he concludes.

Daisy was right. He ignored her for months. And now here he is moping about her absence.

It doesn’t change the fact that she is very good at what she does and if he didn’t know her and was just watching her speak for the first time he’d still try to find her and give her a job.

If all he knew of her were these videos she keeps sending into the world, hoping the world would reply (he’s _trying_ to) he would still want her in his team.

The way she anticipates the objections of naysayers.

“What if the government is right?” she is saying. Coulson knows this part by heart. “But they don’t understand, at the end of the day you’re going to need us. Because this thing controlling Inhumans and hurting people, that’s Hydra. And this is about us, not humans. It’s part of our history. Containing us is not the solution. We are the solution.”

Calling the troops to battle.

Coulson can’t say it doesn’t look good on her (he’s always liked that, since before he met her, her impassioned speeches - they were a bit naive when she was with The Rising Tide) but there’s something behind that passion now.

There’s desperation.

Phil Coulson knows all too well how that looks.

 

+

 

If she is a general he’s willing to offer some artillery.

He gathers the team in his office, like every time after a new video, for an update of the situation.

“She’s beginning to lose hope,” Coulson tells them. “We need to get it back to her.”

He looks at Mack. He’s been the closest to Daisy before she left, if someone understands what he is talking about it’s Mack. And sure enough Mack gives him a serious look and a slight nod.

“I’m not sure what’s happening on her end,” Coulson goes on. “But something’s not right.”

He knows part of what’s happening on Daisy’s end: the loneliness, the living on the run - just because these are things Daisy was used to, for most of her life, it doesn’t mean they don’t leave a trace. Coulson only wishes he had done more while she was here, more to show her she had a home, a place in the world. That might have made these days harder for anyone else, remembering what was left behind, but he knows Daisy - it would have been a comfort to her.

If she is a general Coulson only wishes he could have armed her with more memories of kindness and warmth. Easy to say when she’s not here. Easy to think he’ll make it up to her when he sees Daisy again. 

He knows he’s asking the team to finally involve themselves completely. Before they could still play ball with the government, or at least feigned innocence. It’s one thing to ask his team to protect Inhumans and humans alike (that’s their job). It’s quite different asking them to help organize a revolution.

Even for Daisy.

“What can we do?” May asks, pragmatic, not thinking it twice.

“What would she do?” he wonders out loud. He frowns. That’s not the question. “No. What would _Skye_ do? She needs Skye.”

Everyone in the room looks at him like he’s gone crazy.

Maybe he has.

He thinks he has had an “Eureka!” moment. He knows how those look on Daisy’s face - she’s quite about them and she frowns a little. He misses seeing that expression on her face, of the precise moment when her wondrous mind has stumbled upon a solution - a trick, a door - no one else had come up with before. He misses her face.

“You have a plan?” Mack asks.

Coulson shrugs. “I normally do.”

 

+

 

“This is kind of weird,” Miles says, giving him a sideways look. “I guess I can’t call you _suit_ anymore.”

Coulson narrows his eyes at him.

The team hadn’t quite liked this plan.

He’s not sure he likes it very much, either.

They have sat Miles in a seat at the comms center, and they have given him a computer, and now they’re both here face to face, years after round number one.

“To be honest Mr Lydon, I don’t think you’re trustworthy,” Coulson says with a wolfish smile. “But I don’t really have many options here.”

“What do you even need someone like me for?”

“I never said I _needed_ you,” he says, because it’s way too easy riling this one up.

Miles rolls his eyes.

“Okay, _ex-suit_. What do you _want_ me for?”

That’s better.

“PR,” Coulson replies.

The other man gives him an understandably wrong-footed expression.

This is the kind of stuff SHIELD had him doing in the past (a lifetime ago, literally but most importantly, figuratively). After Bahrain, after him and May went their own separate ways, Director Fury put him in charge of - he didn’t use the words - PR for the organization. The counterpart to what Daisy had been doing in The Rising Tide. Counter information. He hadn’t thought much about it at first - people had to be protected from information they couldn’t handle. Then, after a while, he started

The point is, he’s not new at this. And he’s trying to think like Daisy, trying to think like Skye. Puzzle pieces and all that. And everyone out there is a puzzle piece. Daisy is working the Inhuman angle. It makes sense that he thinks to get everyone else involved.

“We’re short on staff here, and everybody is putting out big, scary fires out there,” he tells Miles. “We don’t have people trained to do this. Our goal had been staying in the shadows, keep our presence hidden. With Daisy gone we have no one here who knows how to do the opposite.”

“You want me to run a pro-Inhuman social media campaign for you?” Miles asks.

“Basically, that was the idea.”

Miles looks at him as if he was very stupid. Coulson doesn’t mind. He’s desperate to help.

“You’re the expert on these things,” he tells Miles. He knows the man has an ego. Or used to. “I don’t know, something to prove people on the street supports the Inhumans.”

“Like Hashtag Stand With The Inhumans?” Miles jokes, chuckling.

“Well, maybe,” Coulson says, feeling very small all of the sudden. Stand With Daisy Johnson sounds good to him.

“If she were here she would probably say you don’t need to hack the system to show people it’s rigged,” Miles is saying. Sounds a word by word quote. “The system amplifies lies and buries the truth. We just have to flip it.”

He’s actually kind of helpful, for some reason. Well, people change, Coulson thinks, and losing Daisy must have been the loudest wake up call anyone could ever get.

“The APBs,” he says.

Miles looks confused. “What?”

“The government is issuing all these warrants and public announcements on Inhumans who are not dangerous and we know they’re not.”

“They just want to catch them, the resistance,” Miles says and immediately makes a grimace. “How did I end up with an ex-girlfriend who’s the leader of _a resistance_.”

Coulson is not sure if he is saying it because it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“Not just catch them,” he corrects him. “Create this climate of fear. People are bombarded with these things, they’re on the tv all day.”

The hacker grins.

“What would happen if people spent a whole day without being told they should be afraid of these Inhumans?”

Coulson points his finger at him, “Exactly,” all caught up in the moment. So much he forgets Mr Lydon and him detest each other. “Can you do it?”

Miles starts fiddling with the laptop SHIELD provided for him.

“I taught Skye all she knows,” the man says, smug.

Coulson feels like he should be offended on Daisy’s behalf.

“I very much doubt that,” he tells him dryly.

Miles looks at him for a moment but doesn’t reply.

“She contacted me, once, you know?” Miles says after a while, not lifting his head. “After SHIELD fell. She knew I might have heard the news. He didn’t want me to worry thinking she was dead or something.” There’s a lingering fondness in his voice. Some people are hard to get over. “I don’t even know how she found me.”

“We knew you had figured out a way to take off the electronic bracelet,” Coulson confesses. “It only took you a couple of weeks.”

“I thought that was enough penance.”

Coulson shakes his head, mostly to himself.

“I’m sure it took Sk- Daisy, half that time to crack it,” Miles says.

“She didn’t even try,” Coulson says. Not until it was necessary, he thinks, and by then she was too pressed for time and without the tools and acquaintances that allowed Mr Lydon to take off his. “She wanted me to trust her.”

The younger man gives him an odd look.

“Seems like it worked,” he tells Coulson.

 

+

 

The next video is the shortest one.

It’s also the one Coulson plays the most times. 

“To you at home: I know what you did for me. _Thank you_.”

 

+

 

After that there’s silence for a while.

And then comes, in every news outlet, the story about Daisy Johnson and how the authorities caught up with her and killed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't let the scary last line worry you. Nobody dies in this fic.


	5. Chapter 5

He suddenly realizes his numbness upon hearing of Daisy’s death (while everyone around him acts out their grief, quietly - Fitz’s wet cheeks, Mack’s dropped head - or loudly - Bobbi and Hunter, with May somewhere in between) is not numbness at all. It’s disbelief.

“It’s a fake,” he says to the screen, stepping towards it..

Simmons turns her face from Fitz’s shoulder and towards her.

“Why? Did you see some detail?” she asks hopefully.

“No, I haven’t,” he admits, not meeting anyone’s glance. “But _I know it_. She’s faking it.”

“Why would she do that?” May asks, impatiently.

“A variety of reasons,” Coulson says. “Because she felt they were closing in on her and wanted a way out.”

To become a martyr. To wake people up.

Now that the general public was starting to agree with her position. 

He doesn’t know how but he knows it’s a fake. The video is perfectly believable. The authorities are confirming the kill. But he knows Daisy is alive, out there, somewhere, somehow. He retires to his office to figure it all out. How and why and what he should do to help Daisy with this ruse.

Minutes after May knocks at his door (she doesn’t knock often, so he knows what’s coming).

“I know what you’re going to say,” he tells her, without lifting his gaze from the tablet.

May comes in, there's a quietness around him that he only normally sees her use on the field. It's with that quiet and care that she sits on the desk, right in front of him, and she waits for him to look at her before she speaks.

“We all know this is hitting you harder than anyone. I know how you feel," she says. Coulson thinks he must have made a face, because May leans back for a moment. "When I thought I lost Andrew-”

“And you didn’t lost him, he’s with you now,” Coulson points out. “Daisy is alive.”

“Phil, you saw her body.”

“That can be manipulated, we don’t have all the facts.”

"Okay, what facts do we have?"

That it can't be possible, he thinks.

It's not very scientific but - that's the first fact and the only one they need. That Daisy can't be dead.

Eventually, after much circular arguing, May leaves him to it.

He checks the news reports, how they’re framing it.

_The dangerous terrorist Daisy Johnson has been killed by forces of the order_ is the official version.

The unofficial version is that a lot of people who didn’t even knew Daisy are horrified by what just happened.

For a moment that makes him feel like he’s loosing footing, like maybe he should consider the possibility… but would Daisy sacrifice herself for _this_? No. She is reckless but she wants to live on. Coulson knows it. There are things she will die for, but she doesn’t want to die at all.

And in a moment, with their biggest threat gone the government seems to be concerned with Hydra’s plans again.

Maybe this was the plan.

“Please, Daisy, what’s the plan?” he pleads to the screen in his office. The Daisy up there curiously impervious. That’s not like Daisy at all.

He tries to contact Mr Lydon but he’s not replying. For a moment Coulson thinks that’s a sign of foul play, that maybe he knows something. Then he remembers maybe Miles is grieving too.

Well, he’s wrong. He should be back at work. 

They’re all wrong.

Daisy is coming home. 

 

+

 

Maybe May is right, and he is avoiding reality, pushing grief away. Can he trust his own judgement, when he himself can’t conceive a world where Daisy is not in it? And yet he thought she was dead, once upon a time. In San Juan he was convinced they were going to find her corpse among the ruins of the temple. He couldn’t say he was prepared for it, but he knew it was coming.

Simmons puts a bunch of flowers - daisies, what else - in a vase and leaves it in the lab. She probably calls it remembrance, Coulson sees it as a sign of a defeat he’s not willing to concede. Fitz analyzes the video over and over, a different kind of denial.

Coulson watches all her messages once more, looking for clues. If she knew she was going to do this, she might have found a way to warn them. She wouldn’t let them believe that… wouldn’t let _him_ believe…

Then he remembers that she fighting for something greater and he remembers he’s supposed to trust she knows what she’s doing. Even if she’s keeping him in the dark.

Being kept in the dark is not that palatable, he discovers, but he’s done it to her plenty of times.

Over the next couple of days only Mack comes and knocks on his door.

“You also think I’ve lost my mind? I have not lost my mind,” he tells him, sounding more reasonable than when he did this with May. “She’s alive, Mack.”

“I believe you.”

Coulson quirks an eyebrow. He was not expecting that from Mack.

“I normally go with that my eyes tell me,” Mack explains. “But you know Daisy better than anyone. If you’re so convinced she’s alive, I’m with you.”

The barrier between boss and subordinate lifts for a moment, and they’re just two friends thinking about someone very important to them - but not mourning - together.

Coulson gives him a grateful nod.

“Now what?” Mack asks. He’s never liked not knowing what the bottom line is.

He shrugs, not wanting to lie. “Now we wait,” he admits. “It’s _her_ move.”

 

+

 

The days pass and Coulson is even more convinced he’s right.

The whole country seems to shift mood. Sympathy for the Inhumans rise again ( _was this your play?_ he asks the screen) and secret Hydra operations come to light, linking the worst of the attacks back to Malick and their group.

Everyone in the base keeps out of his way except Mack, and Coulson guesses they must assume he’s in mourning. It’s funny how they treat him like a widower. Maybe he was simply the last to realize what was going on in his heart. Maybe everybody knew before him.

He still talks back to the videos Daisy sent, even though he knows them all by heart by now.

In the one she says “I miss listening to you all,” Coulson tells her: “I have a lot to tell you when you get back. I hope you want to listen to.”

And strangely enough that doesn’t scare him.

Seeing Daisy “die” out there. Spending all these months apart. Thinking back on how he should had treated her when she was here instead of how he did treat her. There’s nothing scarier than that. The very real possibility of Daisy not feeling the same doesn’t daunt him at all.

He wants her to know.

 

+

 

It feels so natural to be meeting her on the field again, after all these months.

Coulson has to make an effort not to look at her (a part of him scared that his certainty that she was alive was denial after all, so it’s good to see it with his own eyes) so he can concentrate on providing cover against the Hydra agents. 

Once there was a way to prove who was behind the supposedly Inhuman attacks the tide changed and Coulson knew it was the moment for Daisy to come home. If only they could find her.

She seems surprised to meet him and Mack and Bobbi on the job. As surprised as them, Coulson guesses, who thought they were just going to help in some side scrap between Hydra and the Inhumans, not to behold the first public appearance of the mighty Daisy Johnson after her “death”.

When the enemy is defeated (Coulson didn’t do much other than cover her, which was fine by him, he had grown tired of watching Daisy use her powers on tv, he wanted the real thing) Daisy walks over to him. Trotting a bit, like she wants to run but feels self-conscious. Coulson’s heart leaps painfully, the revelations of these past months without her even more impossible to ignore now that he is seeing her wonderful face in front of him. He stares at her. Twice a miracle.

Daisy looks like she doesn’t know how to start either.

“Coulson, I -”

“I knew you weren’t dead,” he tells her in a hurry.

The corner of her lips curl imperceptibly. Coulson wonders if she believes him. 

“How?”

“I don’t know, I just knew,” he says.

But there’s not time to talk here in the middle of the street. Not with curious bystanders flocking, and the police getting closer. Technically both Coulson and Daisy are still enemies of the state. They make their way to their means of escape, Daisy going to the Quinjet with him without even discussing it.

 

+

 

Once in the Zephyr 1 they are curiously alone (Mack and Bobbi still making their way back) and Daisy keeps her back turned to Coulson for a moment. He watches her shoulders move as if she was drawing a breath, as if she was readying herself to face him.

Eventually she turns around.

She looks at Coulson like he’s the one come back from the dead and not the other way around.

“You must have a million questions,” she says.

“Just one,” Coulson tells her. “How could you leave - leave _me_?”

Daisy shakes her head and tears start forming in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “I was stupid.”

They meet halfway, Daisy putting her arms around him and hugging him so tight it hurts in the best possible way (also, he can touch her, she’s real, she’s not an image on his screen fuelling his longing, she’s not a voice, she’s not dead). It reminds Coulson of the way she had hugged him after he found her in the Bus’ cell when Ward took her the first time. But she’s burying her face into his shoulder and she lets out one single quiet sob. It reminds Coulson of the way he held her after she found the picture of her and her father. But it’s different to all those times before. He didn’t know before.

_He didn’t know_.

Coulson can’t bear to lose more time. He pulls away from the hug, cupping Daisy’s face with both hands and kissing her mouth urgently. She kisses back quickly, like there was never any doubt in her mind that this was what she wanted. How long? Coulson wonders. He had hoped, with the things she said in the videos…

She kisses back quickly and passionately, like she can’t bear to waste another minute either, and she can’t bear the idea of Coulson having any doubt.

May, Mack and Bobbi come into the room, seemingly unfazed upon finding them kissing, as if it were a normal event. Coulson can feel the heat in Daisy’s cheeks as she pulls back, embarrassed. It’s hard to think of the woman who defied the whole government as someone who would blush so easily, but here she is. Coulson stares at her and smiles while the other three take turns hugging her, May tighter than anyone.

“Ready to go home?” Mack asks her.

She gives Coulson a tiny sideways look.

“So ready,” Daisy says.


	6. epilogue

The next hours are mostly spent on sex and watching Daisy eat over and over.

“What?” she asks, feeling his judgement, pushing chocolate cereal into her mouth, spoonful after obscene spoonful. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of crap I’ve been living on.”

“I would. You made a whole video complaining about it.”

“Oh.”

“The one about your care getting stuck for the night,” he reminds her. “Iowa? I think,” he lies. He knows it was in Iowa. “You only had a couple of energy bar with you.”

Daisy looks at him amazed, just because he has been paying attention. It gives Coulson a pang of longing in his chest. It shouldn’t be an event, someone paying attention to Daisy.

“This is great too,” she says, putting the food away and gesturing between their naked bodies. There’s a flush on her chest Coulson would love to capture forever between his hands. “It’s been just me and my right hand all this time,” she says. “Left hand on special occasions.”

Coulson gives her a blank look.

“Sorry,” she says, blushing.”I have definitely been on my own for too long. No filter.”

He chuckles, grabbing her by the wrist.

“I like No Filter Daisy Johnson,” he says, kissing his way up the inside of her arm, aroused by her casual tone. “She’s nice, she tells me about getting herself off.”

Daisy laughs, leaning closer and pulling at his hair a bit.

“I have left _you_ too long on your own, that’s for sure.”

He presses a long kiss on her shoulder. “Yes, you have,” he says.

Daisy stops pulling at his hair and relaxes her hand, running her fingers through it instead, then patting him like he’s a kid or a pet.

“I’m sorry about that,” she says.

He kisses her face, to dispel her worry, playfully, on her nose, her cheeks.

“You’re going to have to tell me how you pulled that last trick,” he says.

Daisy had been excused from debriefing - or rather she had excused herself, and Coulson, promising she would make things official in the morning. All Coulson knows is that she had contacted all her Inhuman cells from Zephyr 1 to let her people know where she was, and to send reinforcements to the Playground, in case there was trouble.

It’s funny, Coulson thinks. From listening to his father’s lessons he always thought wars ended cleanly and unequivocally. This one just fizzles out, victory a lot less glorious than he imagined.

Everyone was too happy to see Daisy again to want to impose some official paperwork on her first day back; specially because she made it obvious - lacing her fingers with Coulson’s as they stepped out of the plane and into the base - that she had other plans for her afternoon.

“Well, that’s a bit complicated to explain,” Daisy says, snuggling up to him shamelessly, wiggling her way under Coulson’s right arm. She looks so happy and unpreoccupied it suddenly makes Coulson feel bad about doubting what her answer would be. She wears her hand on her sleeve (even when she’s naked). “It involves a particular Inhuman whose powers are not just changing her appearance at will but anyone else’s. I also got some inside help.”

“You have inside people? In the government?” he asks. Being so out of the loop stings a bit, but he’ll get over it. Daisy turns on her stomach, pressing her face to the pillow. Coulson takes the chance to draw his fingers across the small of her back, the curve of her ass. He thinks about what she has just said, still a couple of issues surrounding her “death” he’s not sure he understands. “But the authorities must have figured out it was fake pretty soon.”

“They did,” she tells him. “But they wanted to keep the propaganda of having killed their greatest threat. That’s me, their greatest threat,” she repeats, smugly, giving Coulson a quick peck on the lips for emphasis.

“Well, that backfired big time,” Coulson says, thinking how it was the video of Daisy Johnson’s fake assassination what started turning the tide in this war.

“That was the plan,” Daisy says.

I was right, Coulson thinks.

I know you, he thinks.

He runs one hand between her shoulders. Daisy almost _purrs_ at the touch. He admits he has never had any trouble satisfying partners in bed but Daisy is ridiculous sensitive and it makes Coulson feel grateful and vaguely inadequate. He notices something else.

“You’ve lost weight,” he says.

Daisy turns on her side again, Coulson’s hand slipping from her back to her upper arm. He has no intention of stopping, touching her, not for one second. This is enough a miracle in many ways (she’s alive, she’s home, she wants him), he might be a fool but he’s not fool enough to waste it.

“So have you,” she points out, her words heavy, her fingertips brushing the outline of Coulson’s ribcage.

He recoils a bit, only noticing his thinness himself now.

“Yeah, well, I have been somewhat preoccupied lately.”

He means to put it lightly, joke a bit about it now that she’s safe, but Daisy doesn’t take it that way.

“I’m really sorry, you need to know that,” she says, dropping her gaze.

It’s absurd that she is the one apologizing here, but Coulson finds it very much in character. It’s the thing about her that makes him the angriest, but never angry _at her_.

“You don’t have to be,” he tells her. “You were the one in trouble. I was just the smitten guy worrying about you.”

It’s corny (cornier than he has ever been) but it works, she smiles a bit.

“It’s not fun pretending to be dead,” Daisy says, lighter now. He agrees. “I kept thinking about all of you, what you must have been thinking… It made me feel a bit close to you, though. Because you know what it’s like, letting people who love you think you’re gone.”

It’s different, Coulson thinks. There weren’t that many people who cared when he died. It’s not self-pity. It’s his fault, he should have let more people in his life. Now he’s here in bed with Daisy, so he can safely say he’s learned his lesson.

“How did you know I was alive?” Daisy asks, not one for ever letting stuff go.

“I don’t know. Maybe because I know you well,” he says. Then, more honestly, “Maybe it was just _hope_.”

Daisy brushes her nose against his shoulder, making him shiver at the contact. How will he ever get used to this? He is willing to spend years finding out.

“Maybe you hoping is what kept me safe all this time,” she says.

“That sounds…”

“Like some soulmate-ish romantic crap? Yeah.” Daisy looks so disappointed at herself for even suggesting it. “I never believed in that stuff, it wasn’t for me, but you’re pretty convincing.”

Coulson doesn’t believe in that soulmate-ish romantic crap, but if there’s any truth in that, well, it has to be Daisy for him. It would explain a lot of things, too. He kisses her, lightly, teasingly, not wanting to get deeper again just yet, he’s still recovering from the previous round. She tastes of chocolate and cereal.

“Your logs? I watched those videos over and over,” he confesses.

“You did?”

“Of course. They were my only connection to you.”

“Aw.”

He doesn’t want to hold back with her. He wants to tell her every ridiculous detail.

“At times they almost felt like love letters to me,” Coulson admits, dropping his head.

Daisy brings two fingers under his chin and forces him to look up, see her expression.

“They were,” she says.


End file.
